Win by losing

THAT assertion certainly raises eyebrows. How on earth, in the commonest of common sense, can one win by losing? It’s just pure contradiction. If you win, you win. And if you lose, you lose. Period. It’s as contradictory as white is to black, up is to down.

But, alas, Christ tells us so in so many words. “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Mt 10,39) Still in another instance, he says: “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” (Mt 19,29)

I am sure we are scratching our head as we read these words. Try as we might, we neither cannot just dismiss these words since they are spoken by no less than Christ himself. There must be something to them that our best intelligence just cannot cope.

That’s right. These words simply have to be taken in faith, that supernatural gift given to us to which we also have to correspond not so much with our intelligence and understanding as with the obedience of faith.

Yes, we have to make an obedience of faith, that act of believing not because we understand things presented to us but more because they are spoken by someone who neither deceives nor be deceived. (cfr. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 143,156)

In other words, we believe that we can indeed win by losing on the authority of Christ who precisely won by losing when he willingly died on the cross but rose on the third day. In so doing, he guaranteed the salvation of man, although we also have to do our part of at least believing him.

We have to understand then that what is involved here is not just a natural truth, but a supernatural one, a truth that does not necessarily go against our nature but rather transcends. It’s a truth that partakes of the divine nature of God. That’s why Christ said that we can gain and win from what may appear to be a loss if we do things for “My sake.”

This truth of our Christian faith is very relevant these days as we go through a variety of privations and sacrifices and expressions and modes of loss and defeat. Let’s hope that we come out of this pandemic not having a kind of survivor frame of mind, but rather that of a winner, a victor, a conqueror.

We should see to it that we come out of this crisis feeling enriched not impoverished, happy not sad. And the secret is because we go through this crisis by getting closer to Christ.

This means in concrete terms that we are growing more in love with God and with others. We would be willing to make sacrifices. We would be more generous in our self-giving. The privations and sacrifices we are going through are the catalysts that would make love for God and others deeper and stronger.

This is how we win by losing. By growing more in love, which is another way of saying by becoming more and more like Christ who is God, who is love himself, we can win by losing in the sense that we follow the very example of Christ whose supreme love for us was shown by offering his life on the cross for our sins.

He does not mind the cost involved. His sense of justice is not the strict quid-pro-quo type. It is a justice totally inspired by charity and mercy, completely gratuitous even if it is not reciprocated properly by us.

We need to be more familiar with this truth about winning by losing. Let’s live out what a proverb said: “Those who give generously receive more, but those who are stingy with what is appropriate will grow needy.” (11,24)